Just Stopping By--Dead Man's Sink and Monarch Butterflies

Monarch butterflies on Baccharis halimifolia (salt-marsh elder aka Consumption Weed)

Secret Aging Man (SAM) and I both agreed on Saturday morning that we were ready for a change of scenery. How about the Aucilla River Sinks Trail? I had received a forwarded e-mail from someone earlier in the week. It promoted an upcoming field trip to this place, known for its abundance of wildflowers and unusual geologic features. Perfect for us! we thought--that is, until we met the man in the cherry-red truck.

Josh, he said his name was, and, now that I think about it, I don't think the name was a coincidence. We were lost, you see, having driven down dusty back roads for the better part of three hours. The map we had printed from an Internet site was pathetic, and the Suwannee Water Management District signs weren't very helpful either. True to our low-tech nature, we didn't have a GPS device on hand to direct our course and pinpoint our destination. Enter Josh, the man in the truck. Ya'll aren't from around here. Plannin' to drive that car down these here roads? Why yes, we're looking for this trail, you see, and we've been driving down these roads for a while now, looking for it...

Monarch butterflies not too proud to share the feast with some Common Buckeyes

He told SAM to pull up behind him just past the intersection of two more dusty roads. They both got out of the vehicles, he proceeded to introduce himself and his "wife" (who looked about 14 years old, according to SAM), and then he gestured in the direction of one part of the trail. The men walked several yards in that direction, and I missed most of the rest of their conversation while I waited in the car. I did hear something about Dead Man's Sink, people never being seen again after straying too far from the main road, and this here bein' drug runnin' country. By the time SAM made it back to the car, I had already made up my mind. Let's skip the Sinks Trail and go to St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge instead.

We were both glad we did, because the Monarch butterflies were just stopping by on the way to Mexico, and the Muhly grass was showing off its pretty pink fluffiness all over the place.

Muhlenbergia capillaris seen at St. Mark's NWR

After driving around for hours, a walk was just what we needed. It was a sunny and very windy afternoon. Unlike Maria in James Joyce's story "Clay" (Dubliners), by the time we were ready to go home I wasn't "coloured with shame and vexation and disappointment" for having lost something because of confusion--plumcake in her case, time in ours. My cheeks were almost as rosy as Muhly grass from the sun, the wind...

Love is...a blind--for bird watchers

and the afternoon's adventure shared with my cohort in confusion.

SAM and Walk2Write on a trail at St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge

(I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls...But I also dreamt, which pleased me most, That you loved me still the same...)

Kristin Hannah's 'Winter Garden'--Breaking the Ice of Silence

In Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden, silence is as much a part of the landscape as its dormant apple trees and "whitened landscape [that] caused a kind of winter blindness." Silence threatens to split a family apart when its patriarch succumbs to heart disease early in the story. The two adult daughters and their elderly mother who are left with an orchard business and each other to care for discover that leaving things left unspoken can have lasting if not tragic consequences. Heart disease, indeed.

 Meredith, the oldest of the two sisters, discovers early on--at the age of 12--"the empty spaces that gathered between people." Family members can live together for years and not know each other. What does it take for a tragedy like that to be averted or at least mitigated? The telling of a story--one that begins as a fairy tale and ends as a family history. That fairy tale, though, must be coaxed from their widowed mother by daughters who reveal their damage in typical fashion:

Meredith is a workaholic whose love for her husband threatens to be consumed by the orchard business she's inherited. Her marriage devolves into a series of gestures and one-liners:

Jeff shook his head. It was a minute gesture, barely even a movement, but she saw it. She had always been attuned to him, and lately their mutual disappointments seemed to create sound, like a high-pitched whistle that only she could hear.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing."

"You didn't shake your head over nothing. What's the matter?"

"I just asked you something."

"I didn't hear you. Ask me again."

"It doesn't matter."

"Fine."

Sister Nina travels the world as a famous photojournalist, recording the effects of famines, natural disasters, and genocide. Many of the images she captures tell of unspeakable horror, letting her--and the millions of people who will ultimately view her work--maintain a safe distance from it all:

Changing cameras, adjusting lenses, checking the light. Her adrenaline kicked in. It was the only time she ever really felt alive, when she was taking pictures. Her eye was her great gift; that and her ability to separate from what was going on around her. You couldn't have one without the other. To be a great photographer you had to see first and feel later.

Emotion delayed becomes a way of life for the three women at the center of this novel. Their only hope of sticking together as a family after the glue dissolves--patriarch dies--lies in the truth of their mother's past. It must be spoken to be understood. The daughters will hear the voice of a survivor, someone who lived through a terrible time in Russia's history. Fear of reprisal then and crushing judgment now has rendered the mother incapable of telling her daughters what happened to her and the family she left behind. The fairy tale she has always told them in the dark before bed while they were growing up becomes the vehicle that will carry them forward to reconciliation and understanding.



January 23, 2011, view from a levee, low tide, at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge

When I was growing up, it didn't take much coaxing to get my dad to tell a story about his past. Trouble was, I couldn't remember details. I'm more of a visual learner. Words need to be in print for me. That way I can come back to them anytime I want and share the details exactly as they were written.

In 2001, after years of needling him to write it all down, my dad finally recorded, two-finger method on an old manual typewriter--he didn't own a computer--his story. He agreed to let me "process the words" and create a document so that all members of the family could have a copy. We had a family reunion that year, and I still recall how glad my dad was to have us all together at once, his Memories fresh in our minds. 

Great Blue Heron seen at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

My father grew up in a place that was claimed by various occupiers for periods of time: Russians, Austrians, Italians, Germans, and Hungarians. Here is a hint of what the climate was like when he was growing up:

Since that part of the world is at about the same latitude as North Dakota, the winters were quite severe, with snow covering the ground from the middle of November until the end of March. To get around in the winter, one either walked or used horse-drawn sleds; when the ground was free of snow, to get from one place to another, one used horse-drawn carriages and wagons to move freight and people. Automobiles were very scarce, so much so that children would run out to the gate of their yard to gape at passing cars.

A bygone era, certainly, but not forgotten, and family was always the center of attention in my dad's telling of it. He didn't have any siblings. His cousins were his playmates, and his tomboyish aunt Veronica became his best friend:

She taught me how to whistle on my fingers, how to construct a slingshot, how to whittle my own toy flute out of a willow branch, how to throw rocks for both distance and accuracy; in short, she taught me all that a boy needed to know. 


Anhinga drying its wings at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

Her greatest gift to me, however, was her ability to tell fairy tales. Since there were no mechanical or electronic means to amuse people--particularly children--no TV or radio or phonographs, reliance to entertain children was placed on either reading to them or telling them stories. And what stories that aunt of mine could tell! She had a never-ending supply of tales to tell; she knew all of the Grimm brothers' fairy tales; she was familiar with Russian legends and could recite them at the drop of a hat. She could easily have taken the place of Sheherezade, the girl in the tales of the One-Thousand-and-One-Nights.


Turkey vultures sharing our path at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

 Certainly, there were newspapers, even in those days. My dad walked into town each Saturday to purchase one. At one point, it began to carry news of Hitler's incursion into Poland and the French and British resistance to this threat to their existence. Nothing in the newspaper indicated any danger to my dad's way of life. Nevertheless, he noticed something strange happening:

It was a week or so into September that I saw on my way to school more and more bicyclists--by the hundreds--streaming south and just about clogging the main roads, from early morning well into the night. Most of them were young men of military age fleeing Poland and on their way west to France and eventually to England by way of Yugoslavia and Greece, to join the western powers in the fight against Germany, we later found out.

We continued to be relatively unaffected by events outside our immediate experience, at least in my point of view, through the end of the war in Poland and that country's partition between Germany and the Soviet Union, and for the first part of the following year. It was therefore a tremendous shock to us all when the Soviet armies invaded our part of Romania on June 28, 1940...The invaders' arrival brought profound changes in all of our lives, uprooting us from our homes and precipitating the breakup of our families. 


Lighthouse at St. Marks NWR

From what I gather in my dad's text, perhaps the worst part of the invasion was its element of surprise. There was no time to prepare:

For all practical purposes, we were kept in the dark by our authority figures, who--I am guessing--feared panic and civil disorder more than they objected to the loss of some territory. Perhaps they just reasoned that since they could not prevail against the Soviets, they might as well not make a fuss about it.



Prickly pear cactus with fruit at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

Like most people, I was excited, bewildered, and apprehensive experiencing all the changes brought about by the Soviets' arrival. Perhaps the deepest impression on me was the upheaval of the familiar social order. The mayor was the first victim of the ensuing "cleansing." He was an ethnic Pole, named Adolf K--, a full-time butcher and dealer in meats and part-time city official; while not exactly beloved, he was highly respected by all and did both his jobs to most people's satisfaction.

Suddenly, some individuals started calling him "an exploiter of the working class," with no clearly discernible reason for this label; he and three of the four doctors who lived and practiced in Sadagura disappeared overnight, as did all three attorneys, several teachers, and other people considered to be community leaders. Rumors were bruited about that they had all been "oppressors of the proletariat" and that they had been arrested for their own good; they were to be re-educated in some Russian camps and be made to once again recognize their duties and responsibilities to the state and to their fellow citizens.



Yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria, at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

A pall of almost palpable fear spread among the town's people, primarily because the loudest of denouncers were formerly considered to be dregs of society: drunks, jail birds, shiftless opportunists; they suddenly became organizers of rallies in support of the invaders and were bent on what they alleged was "righting the wrongs" committed by "blood suckers," "kulaks," and "exploiters of the working classes," meaning the previous owners of businesses, farms, and other assets, regardless of their ethnic origins or religious affiliations.

The spreading of news about the arrests/disappearances of people was by word-of-mouth, not very loudly or at great detail, for fear of being considered counterrevolutionary. One never knew whom to trust, whether what one heard was the truth or another rumor...


American alligator at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

 Winter Garden, you see, made a big impression on me, even though it's fiction. Its story within a story is typical of what life is like for people everywhere. An older generation's experiences should not be dismissed or forgotten simply because we are constantly being told to "move forward." It's never good to keep silent and still about the past. Memories and stories do matter, or at least they should.


Monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, at St. Marks NWR, Jan. 23, 2011

Are you doing anything to encourage people to tell their stories? Are you helping to preserve them in some way?

NN/SOTS: Colony Collapse Disorder--'Bee' Enlightened Before You 'Make Your Garden Rich in Gillyvors'

This time of year calls for a bit of shearing--deadheading--to keep some blooms in my garden blooming for a while longer. These beauties waiting to be shorn of their spent blossoms are Dianthus or what Shakespeare knew as carnations, gillyflowers, or gillyvors. So, I got to thinking about another shearing--of sheep in this case--that takes place in a land called Bohemia. One character stands out in this pastoral scene with her steadfast attitude about allowing hybrids into her garden. Why, though? What could be so disastrous about allowing plants that have been hybridized into the mix? Perdita, the stand-out gardener, whose name means "lost," can't bear the thought of allowing anything but the art-less flowers that appear naturally each growing season.

Perdita: Sir, the year growing ancient,

Not yet on summer's death nor on the birth

Of trembling winter, the fairest flow'rs o' th' season

Are our carnations and streaked gillyvors,

Which some call nature's bastards. Of that kind

Our rustic garden's barren, and I care not

To get slips of them.

Polixenes: Wherefore, gentle maiden,

Do you neglect them?

Perdita: For I have heard it said

There is an art which in their piedness shares

With great creating nature.

Polixenes: Say there be;

Yet nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean. So over that art

Which you say adds to nature is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend nature--change it, rather--but

The art itself is nature.

Perdita: So it is.

Polixenes: Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,

And do not call them bastards.

Perdita: I'll not put

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them,

No more than, were I painted, I would wish

This youth should say 'twere well, and only therefore

Desire to breed by me...

(The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4, Lines 79-103)

A swallowtail butterfly (Palamedes, maybe?) on thistle, Cirsium horridulum, seen at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge on May 9, 2010

No one really knows why honeybees have been disappearing in such large numbers over the last several years. Scientists think that a combination of factors are contributing to the decline. Researchers all over the world are studying this phenomenon because the possible outcome could be significant--a worldwide shortage of food. I asked a beekeeper and honey merchant at the Lumberjack Festival a couple of months ago what the latest word is on the disorder. He said he is studying up to be an expert, certified apiarist but hadn't heard anything new coming down the pike. I found out that the majority of his business comes from transporting his hives to fields and groves where there is a shortage of bees and a surplus of plants and trees in desperate need of pollination. Selling the honey is a way for him to make extra income and to educate people about bees and their habits. He also told us to be wary of honey sold in most outlets because it more than likely is "cut" with corn syrup to make it go further. It tastes similar and doesn't look much different, unless you've tasted the real stuff and can differentiate between what's real and its facsimile. A shortage of honey would seem logical considering the shortage of bees. But why is there a decline? Could the bees be confused--upset--by the displacement of Perdita's faves with those "streaked gillyvors"? Presumably, the bees can tell the difference between original, "rustic garden" flowers and the hybrids that have gradually stolen their scene. I wish someone would figure out what's happening to the bees and find a way to help them negotiate this thorny situation.

Prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa, blossom seen at St. Marks NWR, 5/9/2010

A little more light--maybe some funding too--on the situation might help us understand what we as a species are doing to this old planet, right or wrong, and put to shame--where they belong--those doomsayers' predictions that the world is going to end in 2012 or anytime soon.

 

Lighthouse at St. Marks. Guess who took me there on Mother's Day, 2010, after a great lunch out, just the two of us? I could get used to this new-to-me part of Florida.

For this week's Nature Notes/Signs of the Season post and links to other bloggers' observations about nature, please visit Ramblingwoods.com and leave a comment there too. Michelle would appreciate it. We all do.